Microsoft, Google, Twitter Debate HTML5 87
jbrodkin writes "The annual USENIX conference featured an all-star lineup of engineers from Microsoft, Google, Twitter and Flipboard debating whether HTML5 is the 'holy grail' for building next-generation Web applications, and whether mobile developers should build websites or apps. The promise of HTML5 is 'write once, run everywhere,' but the panelists did not agree on whether the technology is good enough to make browser applications feel 'native.' There was general agreement that HTML5 is lacking on mobile devices, and that for better or worse the move toward apps instead of websites is being driven less by technology than the imperative to make money."
Re:Write Once, Run Anywhere (Score:4, Informative)
abstraction layers on top? JQuery type implementations.
Those already exist [infoworld.com] for mobile devices, jQuery Mobile included.
"HTML5" is an ecosystem, now (Score:4, Informative)
There are a lot of things lumped under the "HTML5" moniker that go well beyond HTML the language: WebGL, Web Sockets, SVG, Geolocation, File API, Real-Time Events, Threading, not to mention the very large assortment of styling modules lumped under "CSS3". HTML5 represents more of an ecosystem now, like .NET.
No, it's not the end of the line for other ecosystems, this is just another new one. A very, very important one, to be sure, but it obviously won't fill every need for a client UI out there. That said, if my new shiny app could even remotely be done as a web app, I'd be a fool to spend a whole lot of time and money porting it.
Re:Missing the point (Score:3, Informative)
Websites made entirely with Flash should be killed with fire. It is bad for the user (hard to link/bookmark inside the site) and bad for admins (much more difficult to track usage and maintain). Honestly, I could live without Flash were it not for its video applications. But hopefully people will start using HTML5 for that. As a web developer (programmer, not designer) I also hate working with Flash because it is opaque. You can't make simple updates to content/functionality without loading up the authoring tool and recompiling. Also, it is still an embedded object. It does not interface smoothly with the rest of the page/site.